(Note 1: I’m not trying to pick on Aaron here)
(Note 2: I am not looking to change how pNodes work by default, just wanting to help make it clear to people what they are getting themselves into. A lot of people, including myself, were surprised once they fully understood.)

I think the language used to explain pNode staking is in further need of refinement. For example, calling it borrowed staking or funded staking implies there is a loan. That comes with the idea of something needing to be paid back.

But there is no loan.

So a couple of thoughts to maybe get the conversation going:

(1) SplitStaking (or perhaps DAO Staking?)“By default, pNodes split the staking rewards, owners currently receive 35% of rewards and the rest go to powering the DAO, learn more about DAO at incognito.org”
Pros:

Your pNode can start earning without additional cost to you!

You are helping power the DAO, which helps Incognito get better, faster, stronger!

You don’t have to know about VPS, servers, cores or any other of that techno-babble.

Cons:

You will earn less rewards than Personal Staking (see below).

(2) Personal Staking: (pStaking?)“If you have 1750 PRV, you can remove the node from split staking and earn 100% of the rewards.”

I’m not a fan of the names I’ve come up but hopefully, someone smarter than me will be inspired. I think the pNode at $400USD with ‘split-staking’ is still a good idea, but the language around it needs some help.

But don’t we supply a part of the stake in purchasing the pnode?
In purchasing the device we are granted 35% of its returns because we are splitting the stake?
We are not putting in the full stake, therefore we are splitting it, we get a certain amount from that split but we never fully own anything outside of the node? Since we fully paid for the node at a certain USD amount, and the price of PRV can increase or decrease, so upon a 1750 full stake we would then be paying that 100% at a certain price amount depending on where PRV sits at the second we hit purchase.
Like, I’m not getting the confusion.

I could understand where if a person says, hey I bought the node at “x” price so that should be discounted from when I want to fully stake. So, 1750 PRV minus, I dunno 450 PRV equals 1300 PRV, and that’s the price you pay.

But your pnode automatically earning a certain amount, being given straight to you to use how you want (not reinvesting in some stake pool specifically for your node) and then after your node randomly earns its 1,750th PRV that your node is now fully earning at 100%.

Instead of understanding that, if you earn a certain amount of PRV, that over time you will have earned enough to repay yourself $400 USD worth of PRV so you can sit back and say, “Hey, my node paid itself off! Great!”. But that in no way implies you have restaked a certain amount “somewhere” to “magically” make your node fully and completely “yours”.

Yeah. But you’re not splitting the stake, you’re splitting the reward. When you buy Node, you don’t provide anything towards the stake. That $399 goes toward manufacturing and logistics costs, and paying for the work it took to design the product, not the staking. Ultimately, people are free to build their own Node devices (encouraged, even, since it’s cool to see what people create), it’s just difficult. So the $399 isn’t an investment in staking, but the price for the device. 1750 PRV is needed to stake, which is yours to cash out whenever you want. So it’s not a really a cost, but a reallocation of your money.

But if the part of the reward you split with the DAO went instead to your stake, then it would be terrible for the network, since then it’s basically the DAO paying for validators to be validators. One of the main reasons for requiring 1750 to stake is to hinder non-serious prospects from becoming validators, the other being for the PoS blockchain to determine who proposes blocks. If the Node gives you that automatically, then it defeats the whole purpose.

Just figured out how to quote! Cool!
Yeah, I was just saying if there was confusion, that would be the one that would make the most sense to get confused over. Thinking that buying the pnode, would get you some kind of down payment when you want to go full stake on your own. That’s all.

switching gears
Is it possible to get rid of the word stake then? Us laypeople would get confused by that word being stuck in there. Maybe, “split funding”? Has that already been offered up?

One of the main reasons for requiring 1750 to stake is to hinder non-serious prospects from becoming validators. If the Node gives you that automatically, then it defeats the whole purpose.

You like these quoting skills?

True enough, hmm, so the 1750 is mainly meant to be a roadblock.
Some people are wanting some way around the 1750 PRV to set up a vnode, saying it isn’t fair or something, when in reality it’s kind of set up to be that way, only for the real “go-getters”?
If so, it needs to be marketed that way, no beating the bush, just straight up-“this will not change”, why you ask, “because we don’t want non-serious people easily earning all of the rewards, the easy ones can plug and play with the pnode”. Something like that?

On a more serious note, not to sound like an absolute tool, but it’s an industry term. We definitely don’t want jargon to inhibit the layfolk, but staking is a relatively well-known process in crypto, and we wouldn’t want to exclude the people who know it either. @Jamie wrote a pretty great dictionary that we can add it to if it’s not there, and maybe do more to keep that post front and center.

Okay then steak master, let’s flush it out, so we don’t have anymore misnomers with some people getting confused over it being a loan or not.

What specifically are we trying to say that happens with concerning this name? What does it say to a person when they glance at it?
We want people to understand it is not a loan, but paying for the “hardware” and the “ability” to earn without putting too much time or effort?
So how about, “effortless staking”?
“Passive staking”?
Those seem to get the point across, right?